


John Dies at the End

by incredibly_cold



Series: Hamfam: AU of the AU [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alex needs a hug, M/M, also if you're wondering who dies, alternate ending for another story, henry is a dick, it is actually john, like honestly really dark, no false advertising, or a billion hugs, or maybe just john back, suicide by armed assailant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:28:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incredibly_cold/pseuds/incredibly_cold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate ending for I am Damaged. John has had enough of everything in his life going wrong. A bank being held up at gunpoint, it's a perfect chance. He can die and people won't have to wonder what they could have done to save him. But when he's dead, Alex is left to cope with the tragedy. He knows John too well to think it was just an accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	John Dies at the End

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to check out the original story where John does not die at the end, then here you go. http://archiveofourown.org/works/7023157/chapters/15983800

_John had a hard time believing that this was happening to him again. How many people managed to bear witness to armed robbery multiple times? But here he was, in a bank this time, instead of a gas station, but the situation was still familiar. A man screaming and waving a gun, saying that no one would get hurt if they just cooperated. Funny, his dad had always talked about how black and latino men were thugs, but both times he'd been held at gunpoint, it was by a white guy._

_"Don't try to be a hero!" The man was shouting. Not to John specifically, but to the general public._

_How was it that this was happening to him again? It had to be fate. He'd just come to the bank to cash his paycheck (yes, now that his dad knew he was gay, he'd been cut off and needed an income) and this asshole walked in. He'd sat down with the rest of the people there. It was a pretty slow day. The only other person there who wasn't an employee was a woman probably in her thirties. She was crying and screaming, like it seemed everyone was. That really irritated him. If everyone could just shut up for a minute he could think._

_Was this guy actually willing to kill someone? The safety on the gun was off, so it was looking that way. Still, that didn't necessarily mean the gun was loaded. He almost wished he'd been a bigger gun enthusiast as a kid, because he was pretty sure he should be able to tell._

_It seemed like everything in his life was destined to go wrong. He couldn't think of anything that he had ever loved or enjoyed that hadn't been taken away. There was the obvious exception of his friends, Hercules and Marie, and of his boyfriend, Alex, but he knew his time with them was limited too. When they graduated, they would drift apart and probably never speak again. That was just how things went._

_He considered the danger in front of him, and why he didn't seem to care at all about it, even though everyone else was freaking out. They had happy lives, something they were afraid to lose. John accepted loss more readily than he accepted gaining anything that could be lost in the future. He was aware that other people didn't necessarily think that way. That his level of apathy towards everything was reason for concern. He couldn't help it, ever since he was a sophomore in high school he'd been throwing himself into dangerous situations in the hopes that maybe he could stop the pain of always losing everything without hurting the people around him by making them think it was suicide. He didn't want anyone to blame themselves or say that they should have been able to stop it._

_Here he was, in another perfect situation. He could take it or leave it, the choice was his. Did he stay seated where he was in the hopes that someday things would get better? In the past five years he'd had very little evidence to support that theory. For a while he'd thought he was turning a corner. He had friends who loved him, despite his being gay. He'd always assumed that was impossible. It was a fear that had plagued him for years, that if anyone knew the truth, they would hate him. He even had a boyfriend, and an excellent one at that. Then, all that shit had happened with his dad. That had destroyed what he had thought was his progress towards getting better. Still, would getting shot and dying really be better? It would be an end to everything. Nothing good would happen, nothing in his life would magically fix itself, but it would stop getting worse._

_In the end, that was all John really wanted, wasn't it? He wanted things to stop getting worse. Not that it usually mattered what he wanted. Maybe it did here though. Maybe this was the universe's way of saying 'hey John, I know I've been shitty to you lately, but maybe this will make up for things.' Maybe this was his chance to die a hero, as the robber had instructed him not to._

_John had made his decision. He would accept this little gift from the universe._

_Slowly and calmly, he stood up. The gunman immediately started shouting at him, threatening. John didn't care. He didn't even listen to what he was saying. Instead, he took a step forward. It was kind of like being underwater, he was dimly aware of sounds, but he couldn't really make them out. Still nothing had happened. He measured the distance between himself and the gun in his mind. If he started running now, would he get there before the other man had the chance to shoot? He wanted this to look good, convincing. Why should a robber indulge him in an assisted suicide if he didn't look like a real threat?_

_It was too short a distance to really run, but if he did his slower run, like people do when they're letting a kid beat them in a race, that should work._

_John started, tried to make himself look intimidating. acted like he was reaching for the gun. It was easy, just a few seconds of acting. Not even a full scene, really. Not even something he needed to rehearse._

_He heard three shots, and felt the pain, so close together he didn't know which came first. Absurdly, he wondered about that. The speed of sound was surely faster than a bullet, but how long did it take his ears to process and register the sound compared to his nerves telling his brain that there were now three bullet holes in his body? He was a little disappointed that he wouldn't be able to test it._

_He hit the ground, heard more screaming. Someone was at his side suddenly, holding some kind of fabric to his chest and shoulder, pressing hard. He wanted to tell them to stop. Tell them that he didn't want them to try to save him, that they were hurting him. In both places they pressed, it felt like he was being tortured. Getting shot hurt by itself, but their attempts to save him hurt worse. He was only dimly aware when someone put a tourniquet on his arm. He knew from the pain that he'd been shot there too, but it was overshadowed by the other two wounds. He wondered how many people were over here trying to save him, but his eyes were scrunched shut against the agony, and he couldn't open them._

_He heard sirens, someone was moving him, talking to him. It all muddled into a incoherent, deafening roar, and then he felt himself starting to fade away into darkness._

* * *

Over time, Alex discovered that John's constantly getting in fights was a self destructive tendency. And of course, that it went further than just fighting everyone he could. He never really knew what to do about it, or even if he should be concerned, since no one else seemed to care. It wasn't like John did a good job hiding it and no one else could have known, he displayed obvious signs of having a serious problem, but no one ever did anything. There was the one time when Alex had assumed they were friends with benefits and started dating Eliza, when people did show some concern, which made him assume that they would do something if they thought there was a real issue, but that was an isolated incident. Otherwise no one ever did anything.

The first time he'd started to suspect was when he'd barely known the guy, but he'd gotten a concussion. He'd said that he knew he'd get hurt when he fought, but he just didn't care. If that wasn't a clear sign of someone not caring for their own well-being, he didn't know what was. Sure, he wasn't exactly himself, but that didn't mean that they should ignore it. But Marie and Hercules both did, and he figured that they must know something more than he did.

They got closer over time, which was only natural for roommates. He started noticing all kinds of subtle things that John did that were off or worrying, and he felt like he should do something about it, but he didn't know what. He liked John a lot outside of all that, and he didn't want to bring anything up that would make things weird. He didn't want to broach certain subjects, like how he saw John purposefully put his hand on one of the burners on the stove at Hercules and Lafayette's apartment. How did someone address something like that without seeming judgmental?

So, he did the easy thing and ignored it. He ignored John's swirl of blisters from the stove coils, his compulsive spending, his constant under-eating, and the way that he would refuse to do even basic things that didn't take much time or effort, like putting his clean clothes away in drawers (he just left them in folded piles at the foot of the bed.) To make himself feel better, he told himself that it wasn't a big deal. He wasn't abusing drugs or alcohol, and he wasn't self harming, at least not in the traditional sense. Clearly things were not that bad, so it was okay for him to sit around and let it happen.

Of course, even at the time, he knew that wasn't true. John wasn't an alcoholic because he thought that if he got drunk he'd spill all of his secrets, something he more or less told Alex when they'd first gotten together in that disastrous miscommunication. Incidentally, he also hadn't revealed that most closely guarded secret that he was gay until their sexual relationship started. And he didn't do drugs or self harm because throughout his entire life he'd been in the spotlight because of his dad, and he couldn't have something visible like that stain Mr. Laurens' reputation. That by itself was also reason for concern. Anyone making decisions about what they could and couldn't do to deal with their issues based on making their dad look good needed help. But depressed or no, it wasn't serious enough to be life-threatening. Even if he were suicidal, he probably wouldn't ever do anything because suicide would reflect badly on his family.

Then there was the Christmas disaster, when Henry found out about John being gay and essentially disowned him. It was terrible. John's main goal had always been doing what his father wanted, and once that was gone, he was obviously lost. But by that point Alex had already gotten into the habit of letting anything that wasn't glaringly obvious slide to avoid conversation, and he didn't really notice a change.

* * *

Alex got the call while he was in class. Normally he wouldn't have answered, but it was Hercules, which meant it had to be something important for him to knowingly interrupt a class. He stepped outside and answered, already with some feelings of nervousness. Good news could wait, this could only be something urgent and bad.

"Hello?" His voice sounded more confident than he felt.

He could hear his friend take a deep breath on the other end of the line, which did not bode well at all. "Alex, I'm going to come get you. John is in the hospital. He got shot, and it's bad. I'm on my way, meet me outside."

It felt like all the air had been knocked out of him. John. He had been just fine this morning when Alex had left. Of course he had been though, that was before he got shot? Why should there have been anything wrong with him before that? He'd just been laying in bed and watching Alex with that same bland expression that he'd been wearing for days.

He stumbled into the classroom to get his things,only vaguely aware of his surroundings. He only noticed that Professor Washington was talking to him after he'd repeated himself four times. "Son, are you okay?" This time Alex looked up and noticed that his teacher was actually walking up the aisle toward him. "You look like you're going to throw up."

"John got shot." He said blankly, still not quite able to grasp the idea. "I have to go, he's in the hospital."

After that he wasn't quite sure what happened. He knew that he had his things when he got into Hercules' car, and that there were about three times during the drive to the hospital that he wanted to scream because the traffic was moving too slow and he needed to be at the hospital _right now_. Then they were there, and they were trying to get in to see John. Alex figured that maybe they couldn't see him, since he would probably be in surgery, but then they found out that he wasn't.

There was a doctor in the room when they got there who asked them to sit down. He didn't even have to say anything for Alex to feel the pressing fear of what was to come. "There were three bullets, and none of them hit his heart," he started. "But they did shatter his collar bone and a rib, and the bone fragments punctured his left lung and shredded a few major arteries."

_Oh god._

"There's nothing we can do. He doesn't have much time left. I'm sorry."

Hercules said something to him, but Alex wasn't paying attention. He was across the room, clutching at John's hand like it might help somehow.

John. He was one of those people who always had flushed pink cheeks, but right now his skin looked lifeless and grey. He had one of those oxygen masks on, and Alex could see it fog up every time he breathed out. Each breath seemed too small and too far apart. There was an IV in his arm, which seemed a little useless if they weren't even trying to save him, but then he remembered that getting shot three times would be painful, and lessening pain was the most that could be done at this point. God, how had this happened?

He was vaguely aware that Hercules and Lafayette were there, and that Lafayette was sobbing. He was far more aware of that breathing. He wondered how many more times that clear plastic would fog up, and if anyone else had died with that mask on. Did they get new ones, or just them once they were done being used? It seemed a little demented to strap the same piece of plastic onto more than one dying person.

"John?" Alex could hardly talk, he was trying so hard not to cry. He didn't even know if his boyfriend could hear him, since he certainly wasn't opening his eyes, but John always hated it when people cried over him.

There was no response, but he hadn't really been expecting one. "John, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I didn't stay home with you today, and about your dad, and everything I've ever done that hurt you." It felt important, somehow, to tell him.

And then he heard it. It was hardly noticeable, a slight change in his breathing. Maybe it didn't really mean anything at all, but Alex immediately interpreted the slight wheezing as John saying that he could hear him. It was what he did when he was in sleep paralysis, so wheezing when he couldn't do anything else was an established form of communication between them. It wasn't that much of a stretch.

"Oh my god, I love you so much. I don't want you to die. Don't leave me, please." All his efforts to contain his tears dissolved, and he was sobbing and cupping John's horribly colorless, freckled cheek in one hand while he ran the fingers of his other hands through his curly hair. "No, I'm sorry, you can't help it. I just don't want to lose you. God John, I love you."

John gave another wheezy breath, and Alex imagined that it was his way of saying that he loved him too, but really there was no way to know. He would never find out.

He stopped trying to form coherent sentences, and resigned himself to just saying 'I love you' over and over again until John's breathing stopped fogging the oxygen mask.

His boyfriend was dead, and Alex couldn't do anything but sob into his hair. Maybe it was gross, but he didn't care. He couldn't stop himself, and even if he could, it didn't matter. It wasn't like John would care anymore, and neither of their friends, or his friends now, would say anything. They weren't going to criticize him for it.

* * *

Alex thought that it couldn't get any worse. John was dead, and he was alone. But then he found out what had happened, which he hadn't had time to do before.

He wasn't mugged, wasn't shot randomly, wasn't even the victim of an unfair street fright. Those things Alex could have moved on from. They were horrible, but at least then it wouldn't have gone deeper than a terrible but inescapable tragedy. No, John was shot in a bank robbery. And honestly, what were the chances of him being around for two separate robberies? And of getting shot both times?

Alex found himself obsessing over it. His boyfriend did have a bit of a savior complex, but jumping on a gunman when according to the other witnesses, he wasn't about to fire on anyone? That was a little bit much. It was more reminiscent of his constant need to fight and get hurt. He kept thinking through it over and over again, reading witness statements, and even watching the security footage that was on the local news website. Every piece of evidence brought him to the same conclusion: John had wanted to get shot.

And this is where he had the ultimate dilemma. If John had meant to get shot, then was it suicide, or just another attempt to get himself hurt that had went to far? His gut instinct was to believe that it was the former.

Every day he sat and thought about that, and every day he came to the same conclusion. This was a suicide. John would never kill himself, he cared too much about public image, and he saw his life as more of an endless responsibility to make people around him happy, but to have an easy opportunity to have someone else kill him? An opportunity to die and let everyone around him rest easier knowing that it had been a tragic act of heroism and nothing more? That, he wouldn't have been able to pass up.

Logically, he knew that it wasn't his fault. That this was a very personal decision that John had probably wanted to make a long time ago. But that didn't make him feel any less guilty. He'd been living with John for all this time, and been fully aware of the fact that he was depressed and self destructive, but still he'd done nothing. He hadn't really talked to him about, or told anyone else, or even tried to convince him to get help. He had failed. It was his fault that John wasn't better.

Alex was slowly falling apart. Not only was he guilty about John, the whole thing brought up memories of his cousin back home, and he started thinking that maybe he was the common denominator. Of course, he knew that was stupid, but he couldn't get the idea out of his mind.

It had been days, and he hadn't eaten or bathed since it happened. The funeral was going to be the next day, so he knew he would have to at least take a shower for that. Then he got a call informing that one Henry Laurens was taking John's body back to South Carolina to be buried with his family.

He was outraged. How could he?! What right did he have to take John away to where Alex couldn't even visit him?! This whole thing was his fault anyway, since John had never been that bad until his asshole of a father had basically disowned him and refused to even say goodbye. Of course he wanted him back now that he'd died all heroically and it would reflect well on him. God, burying him with the family? John would have hated that. Now that his dad had severed ties with him, he'd basically decided not to bother with them anymore. Outside of his siblings, he didn't want anything to do with his family. And now he was going to be buried with them. Rotting alongside them forever.

He put on John's favorite jacket, laid down in his bed, and sobbed. This whole thing was so horrible. There was nothing he could do about any of it. Despite being an adult who should be able to exert some degree of control over his life, he was powerless here. He couldn't stop John from dying, couldn't stop Henry from doing whatever the hell he wanted. He couldn't do anything.

That was when he noticed a slip of paper poking out of John's stuffed turtle. It was one of those decorative stuffed animals with a little picture pouch on the belly. Currently it was a hand drawn picture of Alex, but there was way more in there. He pulled it out and found a full sheet of paper, folded into a neat little square. On the back was a short note.

_I assume that if someone inspecting my turtle Eduardo, and I haven't stopped you, then I'm not here. I also assume that if it were a short trip then you wouldn't be looking closely enough to notice anything, so either I'm hurt or dead. Maybe on a trip somewhere, but I don't have one of those planned, so here we are. If I am dead, then I guess this note paid off, and if I'm not I guess I'll be getting shit about it for years. Anyway, this is for Alex. If you aren't him, please give it to him._

Oh god. He would recognize that messy handwriting anywhere. It was John. His John. Alex wasn't sure he even wanted to know what it said, but he was unfolding it anyway. On the other side there was a letter.

_Dear Alex,_

_So I'm dead. Or I'm not dead and you're snooping like a dick, but we'll just say I'm dead. First of all, I'm sorry. I'm sure that whatever happened was avoidable, and it's my fault that this happened. I'm not going to try to justify that, but I am sorry about it. I'm sorry I couldn't have been better._

_I don't really have a will, because that seems stupid at my age, but you can have whatever you want. Anyone can have whatever they want, actually, but you get first pick. I don't know what you're going to do about living situation, but you've got plenty of friends, and professor Washington, so I'm sure you'll figure something out. You're too smart not to._

_And since I can't say it to you myself right now, I want to thank you. A letter isn't as good as doing it in person, and I'm sorry about that too, but thank you. You've made the past year and wonderful. Even before we were dating, I loved seeing you every day and getting to be around you. You're an amazing person. I'm glad I finally got over some of that dumb shit about being gay and decided to say something, even if it didn't go as smoothly as it could have. I'm glad that I got beat up and that Washington insisted on taking me home and asking me all about my life, and I'm glad that they didn't let you stay in the library that night, and Washington found you too, and that he asked me if you could live with me, and that everything happened exactly the way it did._

_I love you so much, Alex. I'm glad I spent the end of my life with you, because you made it worth it. Every bad thing, you made it all worth it. I know you feel bad about what happened with my dad, but please don't. It was going to happen eventually, and nothing could have stopped it. I'm not upset with you, and I never was. If anything, I'm glad that it happened when I had someone like you to help me through it._

_And now we're at the end. There's a shoebox under my bed full of letters just like this one. I've been compulsively writing new ones every month or so just in case I die to anyone who means a lot to me. If you could give those out to people, that would be great. Names are on envelopes, you can hand deliver most of them. The new letter to dad isn't sealed, and I'd like you to read it._

_I love you more than words can ever say, and I'm sorry that this happened. I'm sorry that I left you, and that we don't even have the option to grow old together anymore. Not that I would ever assume you would want to, but I would have. Now that I'm gone, I want you to move on though. You can take your time, but don't think that just because I've always been a little bit of a jealous asshole, I'd be offended by you finding someone else. You have a magnetic personality, and I know that everyone will always fall in love with you, and I want you to fall in love with them too, eventually. I want you to be really happy and maybe get a turtle someday and name it after me. I don't know, that's stupid, but still._

_I love you so much Alex. Please don't ever forget that._

_-Yours forever and ever, John Laurens_

Alex didn't know what to say or what to do. It was like talking to him again, with his stupid self conscious rambling. He would never hear that again. Never hear that voice with his actual ears. He could imagine it, of course, but it wasn't the same. He was crying so hard that he could hardly read the words by the time he got to the end, and he had to hold the letter away from him a little so that his tears didn't ruin it.

The box, he had to get the box. John's last instructions to him were to give out those letters, he had to do it. He pulled it out from under the far corner of the bed and opened it. There was one that said Hercules Mulligan, and then Marie Lafayette, and then one for each of the Washingtons, and some people he only vaguely knew around campus. Then there were the ones with addresses. One for each of his siblings, and some guy named Jake, and a Martha Manning, and lastly to his father. All of them were unsealed, actually, probably so he could replace them when he rewrote them and not have to get new envelopes, but Alex sealed all the others without reading them. They were none of his business. The letter for Henry though, he had permission to read.

_Dear dad,_

_I know that you hate me. You think I'm a disappointment, and you might not even open this at all, though I would hope you'd at least be willing to hear your son's final words to you. You can pretend that Christmas never happened, you can take my body home to the family cemetery, you can choose to forget that you shut me out. I just want you to know that I never forgot. I was done trying to please you. If I hadn't died, I would have had a huge gay wedding with Alex and rubbed it in your face, and let everyone know what a horrible father you really are._

_Fuck you._

_-John Hamilton_

John Hamilton. _Hamilton._ In his last letter to his father, he'd taken Alex's last name just to piss him off. Weirdly, it made Alex laugh. They were never engaged, had never even talked about it. John had said himself in the letter to Alex that he would never have assumed that they would spend the rest of their lives together, even though he wanted to. It was purely an act of defiance toward the man who he'd allowed to walk all over him his whole life. It was beautiful, and he kept laughing until he started crying again John had died thinking that Alex wouldn't have wanted to marry him. It was a stupid thing to cry about, they were still in college, it was way too early to have been getting married, but still.

He sealed that envelope too, and left the house, still in John's jacket. He dropped the addressed and stamped envelopes in the mail, and started toward Hercules and Marie's apartment.

John Hamilton. He would have liked that.

**Author's Note:**

> Lmao hope you enjoyed the suffering and also I'm so sorry. Anyway please comment bc I cried while writing it and I want to know if you cried because that's my goal honestly. If you don't feel like filling in all the shit, come talk to me at incredibly-cold.tumblr.com. Love you guys.


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